Ask most people why they did what they did and they will give you a reason; ask them again a week later and the reason will have quietly changed. The honest conclusion is uncomfortable for reformers: people are not waiting to be corrected. The measure that matters is not what people say about attention but what they do when nobody is scoring. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the school run, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance.
Why it persists
Institutions know all this, of course, which is why the school run is so rarely left to chance. The point is not that people are foolish. The point is that attention is expensive, and we economise on it like everything else. The measure that matters is not what people say about attention but what they do when nobody is scoring. It is tempting to call this irrational. It is more useful to ask what it is for.
